The world returned in pieces.

  First came sound

  A high, keening whine that drilled into her skull like a physical thing, slowly resolving into the ringing of her own ears. It was the only sound at first, loud enough to drown out everything else, loud enough to make her think she'd been deafened along with everything else.

  Then came sensation.

  Heat against her skin, radiating from somewhere close. Pressure against her chest, heavy and suffocating, pinning her in place. The weight of something draped over her, thick and smothering, pressing down from all sides.

  Then came smell

  Acrid, burning, the unmistakable stench of chemical fire and melted synthetics and something else, something organic and terrible. It coated the back of her throat with every breath, made her stomach lurch, made her want to gag.

  Then came her sight.

  Darkness. Complete, absolute, total darkness. For a terrible, heart-stopping moment, she thought she'd gone blind, that the blast had taken her sight along with everything else. She blinked, rubbed her eyes with a hand that felt like it belonged to someone else, saw nothing.

  Then she remembered the tarp. The fire-retardant, chemical-resistant tarp she'd thrown over them at the last second, the one she'd grabbed from under the cot in that final, desperate moment before the world ended. They were still under it.

  She tried to move. Her body screamed in protest.

  Her head, where her horn used to be, where a ragged stump of torn flesh and exposed bone now sat, throbbed with a ringing pain so intense it made her vision swim even in the darkness. Fresh blood, hot and sticky, ran down the side of her face in slow, steady rivulets, pooling in the hollow of her collarbone, soaking into the collar of her shirt. She could feel it dripping onto the tarp beneath her, could smell the copper tang of it mixing with the chemical stench, could taste it on her lips when she licked them without thinking.

  Her left arm wasn't responding right. She tried to move it, got nothing but a weak twitch. Nerve damage, maybe. Or just numb from the position she'd been lying in. She couldn't tell. Didn't have time to figure it out.

  But she was alive. She was alive, and Aren was alive.

  She could feel him, small and warm and alive. His heartbeat hammered against her ribs, fast and terrified, but steady. His small hands clutched at her shirt with a grip that would leave bruises, his fingers digging into the fabric like it was the only thing keeping him anchored to the world.

  Behind the gas mask, his breath came in short, sharp gasps, fogging the lenses, but he was breathing. He was alive.

  Good. Good. That was enough. That was everything. They were alive. Felt like shit. But still alive.

  Cid lay still for a long moment, letting her body catch up with her brain, letting the pain settle into something manageable. The ringing in her ears began to fade, replaced by other sounds, the crackle of dying flames, the drip of melted materials, the groan of stressed metal settling into new shapes. And beneath all that, the distant, muffled sound of voices.

  The thugs. They were still out there. Or what was left of them.

  She forced herself to focus. To think. To plan.

  Injury assessment: severe blood loss from the horn wound, possible concussion from the blast, left arm non-responsive, general shock setting in. Not good, but not immediately fatal. She'd worked through worse. Probably.

  Position: under the tarp, somewhere in what used to be her apartment. The floor beneath her was uneven, melted, probably, or collapsed entirely. She could feel heat radiating from below, could hear the faint sizzle of chemical reactions still running their course.

  Enemies: unknown number. At least four from the original crew, maybe more if they'd called for backup. Armed. Professional. Looking for her.

  Assets: one terrified child, one gas mask, one tarp, one mostly useless body. No weapons. No tools. No exits she could see.

  She needed to move.

  "Aren." Her voice came out as a croak, barely audible even to her own ears. She tried again, louder, forcing the words past the pain and the shock and the fear. "Aren. Can you hear me?"

  A pause. Then a small nod against her chest. His fingers tightened on her shirt.

  "Good. Good." She swallowed, tasted blood and smoke and something chemical, something that burned on the way down. Blech.

  "We need to move. Need to get out of here. When I say go, you stay close to me. You don't let go of my hand. You don't look back. You don't stop for anything. Understand?"

  Another nod. Faster this time. Desperate, but focused. She could feel him gathering himself, preparing to move, trusting her completely.

  "Okay." She shifted, testing her limbs, finding purchase with her feet. The tarp slid against her back as she moved, whatever was around it had been melted into slag, and the tarp was all that stood between them and very unpleasant chemical burns. "Okay. On three."

  She counted silently. One. Two.

  Three.

  She threw the tarp off.

  The world exploded into light and heat and chaos.

  The apartment was gone. Completely, utterly, irrevocably gone. The walls were melted curtains of slag, drooling down into pools of cooling metal that hissed and popped with residual heat. The floor was a crater, a massive, smoking pit that had eaten through to the level below, revealing twisted rebar and collapsed concrete and darkness. The ceiling had collapsed in places, and through one of those gaps, she could see the night sky. Stars. Freedom.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Her workbench was a skeleton of twisted metal, its legs bent at impossible angles, its surface nothing but ash. The fungal growth on the wall was a blackened scar, dead and crumbling. The corner where Aren had arranged his treasures, where his clothes, his drawings, his collection of interesting bolts had been—was simply... gone. Erased. As if it had never existed.

  Everything she'd built. Everything she'd owned. Everything she'd been.

  Gone.

  No time to mourn, I suppose. The voices were closer now, one of them just on the other side of what used to be the door, shouting about the fire, about the chemicals, about the need to secure the perimeter before the enforcers showed up.

  Cid's eyes swept the room, searching for an exit, for anything, for...

  The vent.

  It was set low in what used to be the far wall, half-hidden behind the melted remains of a storage cabinet. The cover was bent, warped by the heat, but still attached, barely. Beyond it, darkness. A way out.

  She grabbed Aren's hand, small and trembling, and pulled him toward it.

  They crossed the ruined space in a stumbling run, dodging pools of still-fizzing chemicals, stepping over debris that crunched and smoked beneath their feet. Cid's injured arm screamed. Her head throbbed with every step. Blood continued to pour down her face, leaving a trail behind them that any competent tracker could follow.

  Didn't matter. They just had to get out. Had to get away. Had to survive.

  She reached the vent, dropped to her knees, and kicked.

  The cover flew off with a shriek of tortured metal, clattering across the floor and disappearing into the crater. Beyond it, darkness. Cold air. Freedom.

  Cid turned to Aren. His face, visible now without the tarp's cover, was streaked with tears and soot and something that might have been blood, probably hers. His blue eyes were huge in the dim light, fixed on her face with an expression she couldn't read. Fear? Trust? Hope? All of the above?

  "You first," she said, pushing him toward the opening. "Crawl. Don't stop. Don't look back. I'll be right behind you."

  He hesitated for just a moment, a single heartbeat of uncertainty, then nodded and scrambled into the vent.

  Cid watched him go, watched his small form disappear into the darkness, and then she followed.

  The vent was narrow. Too narrow. Designed for air and maintenance access, for rodents and repair drones, not for full-grown demons with injuries and a child. Cid had to squeeze, to twist, to force her body through spaces that didn't want to accommodate her. Her injured arm dragged behind her, useless and painful. Her head bumped against the metal ceiling with every movement, sending fresh waves of agony through her skull.

  She crawled. She kept crawling. Because stopping meant dying, and dying meant leaving Aren alone, and she also didn't want to die in a vent. Not today. Not ever.

  Ahead of her, she could hear Aren moving, small, quick, finding paths through the darkness that she couldn't see. He didn't cry. Didn't whimper. Didn't slow. He just kept going, deeper and deeper into the maze, trusting that she would follow.

  The vent branched. Then branched again. Cid lost track of direction, of distance, of time. There was only the crawl, only the need to keep moving, only following behind Aren.

  Behind her, muffled by layers of metal and concrete, she heard shouts. The thugs had found the vent. Were probably already inside, already searching, already gaining.

  She crawled faster.

  They emerged in a maintenance tunnel, wider, older, lined with pipes that dripped and hissed. Cid tumbled out of the vent and lay on the concrete floor, gasping, her body screaming, her vision swimming.

  Cid slowly sat up and looked at Aren. His face, visible now in the starlight, was streaked with tears and soot and something that was definitely blood, definitely hers. His blue eyes were huge in the darkness, fixed on her face with an expression she couldn't read. Fear? Relief? Trust? All of the above?

  "You good?" she asked.

  He nodded. Then, slowly, carefully, he reached up and touched the place where her horn used to be. His fingers came away red. His face crumpled.

  Cid grabbed his hand, wiped the blood on her already-ruined shirt. "Doesn't matter. It'll grow back. Eventually. What matters is we're alive. We're out.'

  "How bad is it?"

  Cid's voice was calm, conversational, like she was asking about the weather. Aren looked up at her, his face barely visible in the dim light filtering through the gap above. She was examining her wound, probing it with careful fingers, wincing, then probing again. The bleeding had slowed, but not stopped. The wound was ugly, a raw, ragged circle where her horn used to be, ringed by torn flesh and, if she was honest with herself, a small sliver of exposed skull.

  "Pretty bad," she answered her own question. "But not fatal. Probably." She glanced at him. "You did good back there. Didn't panic. Didn't scream. Followed instructions." A pause. "Most adults can't do that."

  Aren blinked at her. Then, slowly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his broken projector. He pressed the button. Click. Nothing. He pressed it again, harder. Click. Still nothing.

  Then he held it out to her.

  Cid stared at it for a long moment. Then she laughed, a short, broken sound that was half sob and half genuine amusement. It hurt her head. It hurt her chest. It hurt everywhere. But she couldn't stop it.

  "You want me to fix this now? Here? In a back alley, bleeding out, with half the city probably looking for us?"

  Aren didn't lower his hand. Just waited. Patient. Trusting. Completely, utterly certain that she would make it right.

  Cid shook her head slowly. "You're something else, you know that?" She took the projector from his small fingers, turned it over in her blood-stained hands. The crack in the lens had grown, probably from the heat of the explosion. The power cell was definitely dead, she could feel the lack of weight, the hollow emptiness where energy used to live. The housing was warped, the seams misaligned, the internal components probably shaken loose or melted entirely.

  She could fix it. Would need tools, soldering iron, replacement cell, calibration equipment. Would need parts, new lens, maybe new housing. Would need time, hours, maybe days, depending on the damage. None of which she had. None of which she could get anytime soon.

  But she would. Eventually. When they were safe. When she'd stopped bleeding. When the world stopped trying to kill them.

  "Later," she said, handing it back. "I promise. When we're somewhere safe, when I've got my tools, when everything's not on fire, I'll fix it. Okay?"

  Aren considered this. His blue eyes searched her face for something, deception? Doubt? Hope? She didn't know. Couldn't tell.

  Then he nodded, once, sharp and decisive. He tucked the projector back into his pocket, patted it once to make sure it was secure, and leaned against her side.

  They sat in silence, listening to the distant sounds of the city, the shouts, the sirens, the ever-present hum of a million lives being lived in close proximity. Somewhere out there, her sister was probably still working, still fighting, still completely unaware that everything had changed. That Cid was gone. That she'd never see her again.

  The thought should have hurt more. Maybe it would, later. When the adrenaline wore off. When the shock faded. When she had time to feel things properly.

  Right now, all she felt was tired.

  Cid closed her eyes. Let her head rest against the cold wall behind her. Let herself feel, for just a moment, the weight of what she'd done.

  She'd blown up her apartment. Cut off her own horn. Faked her death. Escaped into the night with a child that wasn't even hers.

  And now she was sitting in an alley, bleeding, with no plan, no resources, no future, and no idea what came next.

  Aren's breathing evened out against her side, asleep, somehow, despite everything. His small body was warm against her, a steady presence in the darkness. Cid looked down at him, at his peaceful face, at the way his fingers still clutched a fold of her shirt even in sleep.

  She didn't know what came next. Didn't know how they were going to survive. Didn't know if they'd make it through the night, let alone the weeks and months ahead.

  But she knew one thing: she wasn't going to let him down.

  Whatever it took. Whatever she had to do. However far she had to go.

  She was going to keep this child alive.

  Maybe that was how Rhaene got the kid. Saved him once and couldn't leave him alone since.

  The night stretched on. The city hummed. And Cid got some of the first shut-eye she'd gotten in a long while.